The Threeasfour designers are typically a pretty insular bunch. Adi Gil, Angela Donhauser, and Gabriel Asfour hang out in their studio having conversations about geometry, and then they turn those conversations into clothes of exceptional technical invention and limited commercial viability, which they show, mostly, to their friends. That's been the rule, anyway, a rule Threeasfour gleefully broke last night.

The designers summoned their cast to a small park in Chinatown, where an architect pal had constructed a spiral-shaped structure that operated as a screen. An abstract film by Christina Kruse, starring various nineties models, was projected onto it, behind the girls walking today. A new Nico Muhly composition soundtracked the lineup. Along with the expected editors and friends-of-Threeasfour gathered for the presentation, a large crowd of onlookers was milling around, taking in the scene. That was fitting, because Threeasfour seems, this season, to have gotten into the business of accessibility.

Starting with the idea of light and shadow, the designers made their clothes in mostly black and white, with a complementing dapple of silver. Their signature circular seaming—so influential—was again on display, this time working into retail-friendly cotton twill pants with perforated leather insets, and several bathing suits. Used as underpinnings, the latter were made out of a remarkable holographic material. Elsewhere, Threeasfour developed its obsession with circularity: The designers cut simple slipdresses of various lengths with sculptural circular hems, and hand-tacked circular paillettes of kimono fabric into a showpiece gown. Those kimono fabrics showed up fairly frequently as insets, adding a welcome vintage warmth to the collection. Rough leather harnesses, hand-knotted and shaped into vinelike arrangements, contributed another rich texture. This was futurism in conversation with the past—and with the present and, perhaps most impressively, with the public.